


Ticking Clocks

by didsomeonesayventus



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Insanity, Self Harm, Side Effects, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-03
Updated: 2015-12-03
Packaged: 2018-05-04 16:52:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5341457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/didsomeonesayventus/pseuds/didsomeonesayventus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clocks are reliable little things until they break.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ticking Clocks

The first leap wasn’t so bad. Just a few years ahead, wasn’t it? A promise that traveling across time would be quick little bursts, easy on him. The first jump made Xehanort feel like something was trying to tear him apart as he tried pushing through something huge and thick and lethargic. Of course, he paused to recover, and then in a hasty, prideful move he jumped through time again.

Decades passed in a blink. Something burned him but left no mark or trace just the needles plunging into his skin with every second that passed in immeasurable moments. He tumbled onto the new sands of home gasping and writhing and _burning_ \- thanks were muttered when waves washed over him. This island was a prison but at least it was a comfortable one.

From there he stumbled into a home- his home but it was not so any longer -to glance at a clock, a calendar, anything to tell him when he was. He didn’t know the pictures of a young couple, smiling, brown haired and blue-eyed. He shrank back into the shadows from the weary, joyful voices in a back room mixed with a baby’s chortling.

Decades were scrawled along the wall. The calendar and clocks were plain and simple but Xehanort could sense all the time he had missed and passed meandering along the wall, bleeding, leaking, waiting for the lost soul to wander back into place. 

It was confirmed to him that his parents, acquaintances, everyone he knew of were likely long dead.

The clock continued moving.

Ticking.

The baby laughed.

...

He kept running around time, fighting these mere children who wielded the Keyblade. The oaf was slow and sluggish. The boy was inexperienced by years. Even the “Master” of them wasn’t that much of a challenge. He let her off easy. He let them all of easy. They bore the mark, the X. They were targets.

They were children.

He was a child.

He sat next to the waterfalls of this world and waited for them to return while reminding himself he was years older than they ever would be.

...

Years kept slipping. Slipping, slipping, slipping through his fingers like the crushed, worn seashell and stone of home. He couldn’t trust clocks, he couldn’t trust calendars. Only if they were from home. He tried writing the years down, but misplaced the papers each time and lost them when he jumped. He tried making a code to use with a broken pocket watch but found himself staring at it far too long and thinking about it far too much. He tried marking his arms in marker, expecting the dark ink to sink into his skin and last; and last it did until he took a few showers.

He needed something... permanent. Something that he could easily carry on his person that he couldn’t lose and need only glance at.

His nails dug into his skin, leaving red, raw lines.

And he had his answer.

...

The sensation of jumping another ten years was paltry. Once again he returned to those dreaded islands to see if had been exactly ten years since fighting those children. Watching the baby he had heard so long ago laughing as a gangly, lazy fourteen-year old on the shore in what to him was such a short amount of time was surreal.

No one saw the ghost in black who watched the sunset, wondering when he’d be completely free of it.

Somewhere a clock kept ticking.

...

“It was a simple task I gave you: corrupt the boy.”

The elder’s voice wasn’t supple or gentle. It grated his ears and burrowed into them like knives and needles.

“It was a simple task. It merely had unforeseen circumstances that changed-”

“All of our effort wasted because you couldn’t handle a child-”

“But Riku is no mere child-”

“Regardless of his involvement Sora should have been broken enough for us to take hold.”

“Well what about Axel- Lea- whoever the redhead was? He was unforeseen. They all were. We weren’t properly prepared-”

The master raised his hand.

The youth sealed his lips.

“ _We_ were prepared enough. _You_ failed to do your duty. Don’t. Disappoint me. Again.”

The youth nodded gently, wincing, curling, bowing as the master left.

He felt scars on his back ache.

It could’ve been worse.

Ticking filled his ears, buzzing with laughter.

...

His wrists were full of notches. Lines of raised flesh for each year, left barren and grooved like tilled farmland. So long he had spent away from his own time, in this conflict of worlds and light and darkness and Keyblades and-

Did he really want to go home? Go back to dull simplicity?

He ticked off more years. He knew he’d be stuck here in this endless future, eternally helping his elder until one day he’d finally snap back to his own time; but what if he was dragged back again and again and again and it never ended?

It was dull and vapid and horrible confined to those islands, but at least he never had to worry about this. It didn’t bother him but it did.

More years. More blood. More servitude.

Where was his freedom?

He wished he could smash the ticking in his ears to pieces.

...

Trails of broken clocks lead to the young chrononaut’s room. His walls were covered in them, hands frozen, ticking silenced. He gutted them, spilling gears and cogs and springs onto the floor in gory, metal messes with mangled dolls and cuckoo birds with broken wings strewn about and woven in between.

He always broke the clocks, and always brought them back.

He hated their ticking.

He wished they could stop.

Their gears helped his hands carve that damn sigil into his arms, rust pouring from his veins.

“Forever trapped... forever... forever... forever....”

Tick tock... tick... tick... tick....

...

Sora had no words to describe his encounter with the young Xehanort. The cold, shadowed bags under his bloodshot eyes and the rhythmic twitch of his lids. The spasms of his body, the scars under his robes. It took a moment but he noted each spasm... perfectly timed to the second. Like clockwork. Ticking with his own flesh and bone.

“Tick tock, tick tock...” He had muttered, deep voice strained, “TIck tock little hero... your time will be up... All our time will be up. Spent. Gone. The war will come... and we will win nothing but what waits beyond death.” He kept shuddering- tick tock tick tock -and laughed. “What lies beyond the Keyblade War? Why do I seek it? Who knows, it’s all tick tock!” He let out a weary sigh, repeating, “Tick tock... tick tock...”

“T-tick tock...?” Sora asked. Mirroring, perhaps reaching the peer. As much as he hated to admit it, perhaps this soul needed his saving as well.

“DING DONG, YOU ARE WRONG!” The youth bellowed, deep like bells, “MIDNIGHT STRIKES AND THE SPELL IS OVER!” He went back to his chuckling, “Ding dong, ding dong... naught to do but wait for dusk...”

“Do ya mean dawn?” Sora asked. “That follows midnight, right?”

Silver pendulums shook, wiping back and forth across a copper face with silver hands and golden gears, “Dusk. Nothing but dusk. Always dusk, always dark.”

Somewhere, a broken clock began ticking.

**Author's Note:**

> Just felt like fussing with the idea of lil Nort getting extremely fucked up by time travel, nothing big


End file.
